Perhaps I should have spent less time googling the weather in Pattaya, Thailand and more time googling the weather in Tokyo where Mark had his connecting flight to Bangkok.

Here’s the picture I received by iMessage at 5pm today.

It’s no mistake that it’s blurry eyed; it clearly reflects the eyes of the photographer which happens to be my husband.

The picture was of the front of his hotel where he was just arriving…that’s right, at 5pm our time, 58 hours after he left on Friday morning. Apparently, Tokyo had it’s worst winter storm in 20 years right as his plane was arriving. Go figure. So, 24 hours were spent at the Tokyo airport with no restaurants open like one of those crazy scenes you see on the news when you say, “Oh my goodness, those poor people.” Yeah, he was in one of those scenes. He, along with 6 others who include my parents, finally got their 7-hour flight to Bangkok a day late and then enjoyed a 2-hour drive by van to the hotel where their conference is, only to have to wake up a couple hours later for breakfast and their first meeting.

Poor Mark. There must be some significant stuff happening on this conference.

As far as the home front goes, we had our own traveling excitement here. We spent 13 hours in the car in two days as we road tripped it to Virginia Beach for a wedding Saturday. It’s not 58 hours…but I did have the four children with me…so…if you use the kids-with-you-equation, than it was comparable to about 30 hours, I think.

Stuck in the United clubroom in Tokyo for 24 hours trumps that, I think.

Here’s a glimpse of my view right now.

There’s a reason that you can see my dirty window and the screen. It’s too darn cold to step outside my house.

8″ of snow on Monday followed by another ice storm which caused massive power outages all over the place around here including at 4 of the 6 schools in our school district. In the last two weeks, my kids have gone to school for one half day. I’m not even sure their teachers will remember their names when they go back to school next week.

And, while I’m living in an eternal winter wonderland, Mark left this morning for a conference for 10 days…in Thailand…which I just happen to learn has a 10-day weather forecast of mostly sunny with highs in the upper 8os. I just had to google North Pattaya too.

Thinking I better just stop writing at that because the words that may spill out may not be as pretty as that picture.